The present invention relates to a new and improved method of controlling the inlet openings of central exhaust or ventilation installations and also pertains to apparatus for the performance of the aforesaid method.
Such exhaust or ventilation installations are used for the artificial ventilation of rooms or areas, hereinafter simply referred to as rooms, in apartment buildings, hotels, office buildings, industrial complexes and factories and so forth, for instance for the ventilation of inside bathrooms, toilets and the like.
There are already known to the art central exhaust or ventilation installations wherein the central ventilator is turned-on only a number of times each hour for short periods. Such switching of the central ventilator is associated with the advantage that the heating costs for the building in the winter can be appreciably reduced in contrast to systems employing continuous operation of the ventilator, because less hot air is removed. Yet the drawback of such type installations resides in the fact that during the inoperative periods of the ventilator there can prevail unpleasant odors in the vented rooms.
There are also separate exhaust ventilators which can be installed in the individual rooms and switched on and off in such a way that they only run when the light is burning in the associated room as well as still for about five minutes after turning off the light. Such ventilators result in significantly lower heating costs in the winter because they are only then in operation when they are actually needed. It is for this reason that they are increasingly installed in bungalows and single family dwellings. However, in the case of large structures they are rarely used because in this environment the installation costs for a central exhaust installation is considerably less.
In summation it can be stated that the state-of-the-art has taught, on the one hand, central exhaust or ventilation installations which owing to the continuous operation in winter markedly increase the heating costs of the structure or building due to the constant removal or sucking-off of heated air and, on the other hand, intermittently operating central installations wherein individual rooms are periodically not ventilated when in fact they should be ventilated. At the present time, there is no central exhaust or ventilation installation available by means of which air is always only removed at that location where it is necessary to do so.